[McHUG] Welcome to John and Chuck and now Bill

[Rich Mitchell]

Last night John K3KWO and Chuck KJ4GU joined the list.  Thanks!!  Steve N3SB, Pete W3GVX and I (or is that III) are already on.  In addition to providing a forum for sharing info, there are two areas that immediately come to mind where McHUG can help hams play with microcontrollers.

The first is Workshops.  My thinking here is that we should discuss what would be a good general microcontroller setup.  The setup would include a microcontroller, a prototyping or bread board, and PC software that would be relatively inexpensive (free is nice) and easy for someone new to this whole area to use.  On the other hand it would be nice if it could handle more as we continue to learn.  Two systems that immediately come to mind are the PICAXE and the Arduino (or FreeDuino).  Once we figure out what a nice entry level system would be, then we could get together (perhaps some Saturday) and play with them.  Initially that means:
1. Soldering and making sure the prototyping board is working
2. Getting the software loaded on a computer so that it can load programs to microcontroller.
3. Figuring out how to attach "stuff" to the prototyping setup.
4. Writing simple programs to get the microcontroller to do "stuff".
At future get togethers (workshops) we can figure out ham related ways to use the microcontrollers.

The second is demos.  Last year I did a couple of demos for Jim Cross at the ARRL table at Hamfests.  Actually both demos did involve microcontrollers - the second was our very own PICetSat.  This year we could do demos at various hamfests (either at the ARRL table or our own).  One could be displaying a PICAXE, an Arduino and maybe a Butterfly (the microcontroller door prize at Monday's meeting) and actually showing people how to program them.  Once we get some ham applications running we could demo those.  And, of course, at these we could suggest that they might want to attend our MasonDixon Hamfest Microcontroller workshop.  We'll be ready for that because we will have run our own workshops.

On another topic - Steve and Pete - I received a Paypal shipment notification for the Si570 CMOS chips, so they should be on the way.  Ultimately these will be a ham application for the microcontroller.

73,
Rich, N3III

Hey, Bill W3STG just joined - welcome!!
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McHUG - Physical Computing ;) 
MicroController Ham User Group